I talk too much, my words a lullaby of a warm deception longing for release, I realise too often that my tongue slips too much, my mind too vacant. I realise not soon enough that it's been a year since I've seen a other, let alone converse. The door that I'm meant to be holding open, its hinges are rusty and creak in protest. I could always slam it shut and leave the haunting ghost before me. Retreat and rest, hide and lick forgotten wounds until my tongue bleeds black.
But that is what my mother would have done, and on her dying eye, with her fleeting voice she told me I was the key. Back then I was unsure. But today, looking into the deadpan eyes of the ghoulish mare, I have an epiphany. Cold, it hits me, perhaps it's a large chunk of snow running down my shoulders from landing on my withers. But it entices me like a snake charmer. I'm the key, the key to something, life, death. It's an endless circle, an ouroboros of sin and repent.
I stand like stone, my breaths come shallow, smooth. My only ears turn, twitch, listening to every word. She's a beautiful ghoul in the night, a siren at sea. Her words are like a haunting lullaby on your deathbed and I can help but stare in wonder, a little fascinated, s little in awe.
'The mind is a dangerous thing; it's best to leave alone.' I pause, inching a few steps to the side, my coffee bean eyes curious and curious. 'One can go mad when faced with the company of themselves. You learn far too much and far too little.' Riddles and rhymes, a song of dazed might.
'Chantale.' My lips taste, smooth, haunting. I ingest her name like my eyes ingest her form. I'm almost bewitched. Enchanted like a fawn looks up at an imposing predator. So much they want to be like them. To forget the past, to grasp the future.
That's precisely what I'm doing.
'You come like death's angel. What, Chantale is your purpose here?' I ask, my question fleeting, my mind reeling. I feel the scars on my neck burn, the memories like a fire, which thankfully the ice is dowsing.
'Myself? I'm drifting, lost, but found. I'm here to find the key, the key to life... The key to death.'
Morbid little mind tricks. I'd learnt some things from my sire long ago. Life's s riddle, you solve it, you die. You spend decades trying to solve it, you die. Quite frankly the only horizon you see in your future is dark and foreboding, the grim reapers scythe angling for your pretty little neck.
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